Originally posted 6/29/2013.

On more than one occasion
I’ve nearly burst
from imagining that I
was self-sired
and never tired,
on an epic solo flight — 
a great aviator,
all alone.

Self-sired, never tired;
those are my best lies — 

as if I’ve ever been anything
but a lonely son, 
as if I’ve ever been
anything but exhausted. 

As if
the sleep I rise from
hasn’t always been robbed 
from the dark.

As if I
have ever been
formally cleared to land
on my own.

Originally posted 1/26/2011.

You claim
it’s a safe neighborhood.
a good one, trumpet 
that there’s never been
a violent death nearby,
nothing at all in your safe space,
nothing at all seeping from
this ground

that is only yours because
at some point
it was taken by force
and force is what keeps it
yours, even if the blood
was and is spilled
by your proxies,
even if you didn’t know 
it was being spilled.

No matter —
you are you, 
you have no need to pay
any mind to that
so you can pretend to ignore
the black feathers
that have just now appeared
in your hair,
that everyone but you
can see.

When you are home alone,
please —
look in the mirror.

When you finally see them,
pick them out
and place them in a box.

Pull that box out, open it
and stare at those feathers
whenever you feel
a little too divine,
whenever you 
want to remember
how human you are,

then
go lock your doors
and feel a little threat
and a little guilt —

not too much,
no,
but enough.  

Originally posted 8/19/2008.

The natural order: first
we breathe,
then we cry.

Nursing, sleeping,
dreaming, eating,
drinking, elimination — 

the breath is the one constant, 
alternating
between sweet and foul — 

smiling, laughing,
writhing, crawling, walking,
reading, writing, eventually
sex and its attendant foibles;
working,  grieving,
losing, winning,
parenting, 
more of all the above — 

the breathing continues through all 
until it stops for good
when all else does — 

we were built to breathe,
to ride those rails of breath
on a lifelong recovery
from the first sharp cry
after drawing
the ripe tang of the world
into our lungs.

The rest of it, all the rest 
of what we call a life,
is merely a consequence
of breathing — 

we breathe, we cry,
we act, we cry again,
and in the end
when the breathing stops
we fade 
like the whistle of a train
going home.

Originally posted 12/28/2004.   I used to write poems “ripped from the headlines” on occasion.  Most served their purpose — awareness, outrage, release of pressure, etc. — in their moment, while not having much staying power.  I thought this one deserved a second shot.

All day a stream of co-workers have come
to the world map on my cubicle wall,
coming to look for the place where it all happened.

Should I be surprised that on at least five occasions
I’ve had to point at the Indian Ocean
and then do a quick finger tour around the rim?

Or should I be heartened that at least
they came by to look? Or that they even knew
the map was here? It’s evidence, after all, that

the wave in fact reached beyond Aceh, that the wave
hit everything,  though not everything
got wet enough for everyone to feel it.

Here, we use money like paper towels
to keep the damp out, and already we’re bundling up
wads of it to ship overseas and make it all go away.

It’s possible that some come by
because they at least want to see
where their money is going.

“How about that tsunami?” “That one in Indonesia?” 
“Yeah, that one.” “I know!  That sucks.”
“Hey, can we look at your map? I wanna see where it happened.”

I wish I knew if I should cry
or just keep going back to the wall
to point it out again:

here is Phuket, here Aceh,
here Sri Lanka, here Tamil Nadu,
here Pondicherry, here Chennai.

Here is Myanmar, which so far
has been silent. Here we are
in the United States,

and here is everyone else.

Originally posted 9/30/2011.

“they have the father wound”
says the handsome minister
speaking of gangbanging boys
not yet out of their teens

“they have the father wound”
he says again to the interviewer
“fathers take off
or are in prison”

“the father wound”
he says it so gently
candles appear in soft focus 
behind his graying voice

“the father wound”
sounds so deep yet
the minister speaks of how
he thinks he can suture it

as if the killers
off-camera were infants
waiting to be picked up
in their fathers’ hands

and cuddled into health
as if assisting them
into the American dream
would be enough

as if that dream itself
would be enough
to keep them from harm
in this country nestled

at the bottom of a father wound which is
at the bottom of a mother wound which is
awash in the blood of other wounds
named Sand Creek, the Middle Passage, My Lai

Originally posted 10/29/2008, titled “Wet Market.”

A woman stops
at one of the stalls
that offers words for sale
and wonders
what nourishment she can take from 
there is a flower
that grows in plastique
and blooms in blood.

Someone else weighs the possibilities
of 
Valkyrie 
against those of 
Knight Rider Barbie,
tries to choose, fails,
buys both and moves on.

A third rejects all the proffered produce of love,
the red breath, 
the silk finger,
the charred emerald eyes. 
The seller
throws his hands out in disgust.

Modern diamond or heirloom adamantine? 
Is the dusk blue or azure?
Is this a stream or a creek
running under 
sky or heaven or firmament?
People head for home
after hours of haggling,
passing
a small table
outside the bounds of the market
that holds bowls of fresh water,
herbs, fresh spiced fish
soaked in lime juice.  

A sign on the table reads:

Whoever tastes the fresh water
will want to taste the herbs.
Whoever tastes the herbs
will want to taste the fish.
Whoever tastes the fish
will turn from the market
and go home simple and satisfied.

If the sign had advertised
ceviche, or if the sign had advertised
magic for the belly,
this might have been
a different story.
But after too many stands serving 
quick meals, too many ways to overfill
basic needs and answer want with gluttony,
there’s no need to ask
Who will stop there?  
because it’s already clear:

no one.

Originally posted 1/26/2011.

Starting with one thing,
leading inexorably to another:
such a steady bore, a boulder
that somehow gathers moss
as it rolls.

Those who first pushed it
believed they had made a revolution
simply because some things
they didn’t like were crushed
along the way, 

but look —
there’s point A, where it began;
here’s point B, where we are; 
pick your eyes up from its path
and step into the cool, unbruised twilight
beyond it.  

Pretty soon 
you won’t need a shaman to tell you
how much of what we think vanished in its wake
wasn’t destroyed at all,
how much of that is still there,
how much we still need
everything the boulder has missed,
and all that it keeps bypassing.

The original version of this was never posted here, or anywhere…since it was written in 1974, when I was 14.  I found it in my first spiral bound collection of poems that I’ve saved since those teen years.  Most of the poems are typical adolescent dreck with a heaping side of drug references, but I thought the concept behind this one was interesting. The first three couplets are direct quotes from the original poem; after that, the original is pretty flowery and hard to follow, but the images are the same.

I believe in
cheating on my childhood church.

I believe in 
closing my eyes during the scary parts.

I believe in 
the efficacy of crossed fingers.

I believe in
a spirit inside my rabbit’s foot.

I believe in 
a bag of smooth rubbed stones.

I believe
whatever I whisper at an altar will be heard.

I believe
whatever I hear next will be the right response.

I believe
everything, everywhere can be an altar.

Originally posted 12/02/2010; original title “Lives Of The Artists”

They begin
when an explosion
turns the inside out
like a burst in the night sky
on a holiday, and they 

burn. One day a look around
confirms for each
that what was inside,
what warmed them and fueled them
for years,  has burnt down

to ash.  Then begins the refilling,
or the attempt to refill; so begin
experiments and failures,
now and then comes a slight replica
of those first fireworks,

but it is never the same. Some
say that’s to be expected, some say
it’s the way, some say nothing
and turn away — no matter.
They keep lighting tinder in the dark.

Hear a recording of this piece: The Lives Of Artists